Functional Carbazole-Fullerene Complexes: A New Perspective of Carbazoles Acting as Nano-Octopus to Capture Globular Fullerenes

Fullerene host-guest constructs have attracted increasing attention owing to their molecular-level hybrid arrangements. However, the usage of simple carbazolic derivatives to bind with fullerenes is rare. In this research, three novel carbazolic derivatives, containing a tunable bridging linker and carbazole units for the capturing of fullerenes, are rationally designed. Unlike the general concave-convex interactions, fullerenes could interact with the planar carbazole subunits to form 2-dimensional hexagonal/quadrilateral cocrystals with alternating stacking patterns of 1 : 1 or 1 : 2 stoichiometry, as well as the controllable fullerene packing modes. At the meanwhile, good electron-transporting performances and significant photovoltaic effects were realized when a continuous C_60⋅⋅⋅C₆₀ interaction channel existed. The results indicate that the introduction of such carbazolic system into fullerene receptor would provide new insights into novel fullerene host-guest architectures for versatile applications.